Lone Wolf
by elixia13
Summary: When a terrible virus wipes out Cascade, Blair must find the strength to follow the road ahead of him. Character death! Crossover with Stephen King's The Stand.


Title: Lone Wolf I: Journey to Boulder

Warning: CHARACTER DEATH

Spoilers: None, really

Summary: When a terrible virus wipes out Cascade, Blair must find the strength to follow the road ahead of him.

Notes: Blair and Jim belong to Pet Fly. This is set in the universe of The Stand, which belongs to Stephen King

Lone Wolf

I. The Journey to Boulder

Former detective Blair Sandburg steered into the lot of the deserted gas station, parking his bike in front of the doors. Standing up off the motorcycle, he pulled the shiny black helmet off of his head and shook out his hair, feeling it brush against his neck in a sweaty, sodden mass. He wiped his face with the rag he kept under the seat and took in a deep lungful of the still, warm air.

He didn't even bother with the pumps, knowing that they were useless with the electricity down. He entered the small building, ignoring the stuffiness of the atmosphere inside, the thick odor of rot, ignoring the body slumped behind the cash register. He'd once had a hard time with corpses, the sight turning his stomach, but that was before. Before.

Now, he simply took the key from the counter and let himself into the garage area, looking around until he found an orange plastic container more than half-full of gasoline. More than enough for the tank of his Honda. Passing through the front area again, he grabbed a couple of bottles of water and some packaged cookies and pretzels before heading back out to tend to his bike.

The gas tank filled and the oil checked, Blair sat down on the pavement, slumping against the sun-warmed brick of the gas station building. He couldn't rest long, couldn't waste time. Not with the dreams dogging his sleep each night, pushing him on. On to Boulder. Away from Cascade.

Most of the time, he felt thankful for the dreams. He needed to get out of Cascade, and a purpose, a destination made it that much easier to leave the memories behind.

In the end, everyone had died. Everyone. Everyone but him. For a time-god, it had seemed so long-Blair had thought that he and Jim were both immune. Somehow, miraculously, Sentinel and Guide immune to the awful, pervasive death that ravaged their city. And ultimately Jim had lasted longer than any of the others. He remained healthy while they tended and eventually buried their friends, while they tried to hold the city together, despite the panic and the fires.

But each day it had grown worse, more hopeless, the tribe falling apart, the Sentinel suffering that disintegration on a deeply personal level. Finally, most of the city was ash, the survivors fled east or south, or north to Canada, and there seemed little for them to do but follow. That morning, Jim started coughing, and by sundown he was gone. Blair held his hand and tried to keep him comfortable, and every time he looked into Jim's eyes he saw the desolation of a captain on a sinking ship.

And he wept, bitterly, feeling the grief sucking him down, covering Jim's body with his own, lending the cooling body his warmth, sleeping beside him that night in the back of the truck. And that night he dreamt of Boulder.

Falling into hard, exhausted sleep beside the body that had once housed his best friend, he found himself standing beside the truck where it was parked on the docks. Or not standing, exactly, hovering. Slowly, he rose, gaining height above the ground, feeling no fear, strangely enough. At a moderate height he could see the whole city lying charred around him. The Great City, now nothing but ruins. A thought fluttered through his head: maybe some future anthropologists will excavate it; wonder what they'll think of us.

Rising higher and higher above his city, Blair saw the land laid out below him, the miles, hundreds of miles, so very much. He wondered, fleetingly, if this was what it had been like for Jim. So much. Town after town, burned, abandoned, brown and empty. And in the distance, a green beacon. East and south. "What am I looking at?" He whispered his question.

No voice spoke, but he knew the answer. "Boulder." He breathed the word, and in that breath he found himself on the ground again, on a small, fast motorcycle, driving east and south. East and south. Flying, nearly, on an empty stretch of road, helmet-less. Suddenly, a man appeared before him on the road, and he skidded to an abrupt stop, the front wheel of his bike nearly between the man's legs.

Incacha.

"You have seen your new place, Shaman?"

Blair nodded, mutely.

"You must go to your new tribe, which forms even as we speak. You must leave your grief behind you, here in this Great City which has been lost. You must go forward, for you are needed and there is much to do."

Blair nodded again, feeling the necessity and truth of Incacha's words deep within him, and yet... "But, Jim. Enqueri. What of my Sentinel?"

"He was yours, yes, but more so he was the city's. He must be lost with it. That is the way. The gods will mourn him, but you must be strong. Say farewell to the past and prepare for your journey. Leave this place before the sun sets. Now, awake."

Blair opened his eyes, surprised for a moment not to feel the hum of an engine between his thighs. He looked at Jim and gasped, rolling away. The morning light was not kind to Jim's dark, choked face, his Sentinel's eyes, now sightless. "Oh god." Blair looked toward the water, drawing in deep, cleansing breaths to center and strengthen himself.

Rising to a crouch, he pulled Jim's body across the bed of the truck and then stepped down to the ground and walked around to the cab of the truck. He opened the passenger side door and then, taking another deep breath, hefted his friend in his arms, feeling the strain deep in his back, finally propping him against the cab and folding him into the seat.

Blair paused to gaze out at the still, gray water and then heaved himself up into the driver's seat. He started the old truck one last time and pulled it around to face the water. He rolled the windows down a few inches only and then reached over to look at Jim. He touched the man's face gently and then reached into Jim's pocket, drawing out his wallet.

Ignoring the now-useless money and cards, he pulled out the creased picture that Simon had taken the night of the department holiday party. He would do as Incacha asked. He would leave Jim behind, but he had to take something with him. His own face, clean and smiling, next to Jim's seemed like a relic from another time. He tucked it reverently into his back pocket and grabbed his backpack from the floor.

"I'll miss you, Jim," he whispered. "Rest well, Sentinel."

Blair stepped out of the truck carefully, leaving the gear shift in neutral, and closed the door behind him. He walked around to the back of the faded truck and shoved. The wheels turned, rolling over the planks of the dock, and slowly, slowly, the whole thing tipped, dropping heavily into the waters. As the back wheels slipped off the edge, Blair felt his legs fold beneath him, and he landed on the forgiving wooden surface of the dock. His breath clutched in his chest as he watched water rush in through the open windows. Even in the middle of summer, that water was cold. Being submerged in it would be a shock...

Drowning took such a long time...

Blair shook himself, reminded himself harshly that Jim was not drowning, not now; Jim was dead. Jim was somewhere else, in the spirit plane, waiting for him in the warm, blue jungle. Blair stayed on the dock, watching intently, until the hood of the cab finally dropped out of view, enfolded beneath the waters of Cascade. Then, shouldering his backpack, he walked on steady legs off of that dock, through the warehouse district, into the middle of town.

No need to find a dealership, Chelsea St. was one big auto mall, now. Walking a couple block further, he found a blue Honda in good shape leaned against a telephone pole. Blair straddled it, and it started easily. Weaving through the abandoned cars blocking the street, he made his way to the Wal-Mart south of town.

Not knowing if the store would be vacant or inhabited, he pulled his weapon out of his backpack and made sure it was still loaded before stuffing it into the back of his jeans where it would be readily accessible. Then he grabbed a shopping cart and moved into the store. No threats presented themselves immediately. Despite the brightness of day, little light penetrated inside, so Blair retrieved his flashlight as well before continuing.

The store hadn't been ransacked too badly, so Blair's hopes were high that he would be able to stock up here on all that he needed. Moving through the clothing department, he picked out sturdy new jeans and shirts, even a leather jacket to keep the wind of the road from chilling him at night. Socks, shorts. New boots and a new, larger backpack to stow everything in. A helmet-he'd survived so far, and he surely didn't want to die of a head injury on the side of some empty highway. A good first-aid kit. A second gun, and plenty of ammo. And a good knife he could sheathe in his boot. Another flashlight and extra batteries. Elastic bands to hold his hair back. A towel. Bug spray. Razor and shaving cream, toothbrush and paste. No need to be completely uncivilized. Granola bars, dried meat, hard candy.

Then that was all the backpack would hold. He moved toward the fitting rooms, driven by some misplaced modesty to change there rather than in the middle of an aisle. He left his cart with the stuffed pack and the helmet outside and took his new clothes in with him.

He ducked into one of the changing room stalls, glancing at his own reflection in the mirror. Before gasping and ducking behind the partition, reaching into his jeans to draw his weapon. Someone in the opposite stall-could be dead. But it hadn't looked dead.

Blair carefully moved back through the flimsy door, weapon first, cautious and alert, just as he had been trained to do at the academy. Lowering his weapon only slightly, he moved toward the door of the opposite stall, shining his flashlight to get a look at the hunched figure in the murky darkness. "Hello?" A dead body couldn't balance that way--leaning forward, head on hands.

"Hey, are you okay?"

The person looked up, and Blair saw that he was a boy, a young man, 17 or 18 years old. "What the hell are you doing here? This place is mine, now."

Perplexed but unthreatened, Blair tucked his gun back into his waistband. "Hey, don't worry, I'm not staying. Just needed some supplies. Time to get out of this town."

'Is there anyone else left? In Cascade?" The boy spoke quietly, looking at the floor.

"Not too many people. Nobody you want to meet. You, ah..." Blair weighed his options, not wanting to be encumbered on his journey, but not comfortable with leaving this boy behind either. "You want to come with me. I'm going to Colorado."

"Boulder?"

"Yeah, actually," Blair answered, surprised.

"I'm not going there. I'm not going anywhere!" The kid jumped up then, screaming in Blair's face. "I'm staying right here, do you understand me?"

"Hey, chill, you do whatever you want. I'm going to go change. If you want to come with me when I go, that's up to you."

"Yeah, that's right." The kid sat down again, resting his head in his hands once more. He spoke again, his voice muffled. "I'm staying here until they come back."

Sighing, Blair turned around, unable to take the time to help the boy with his pain. Everyone left on earth had lost the ones they loved. He had a new tribe to take care of, and this boy could join it if he chose. Part of him ached at the waste of another survivor among so few, but the boy was old enough to choose for himself. Blair locked himself in the changing room again and examined himself in the mirror. His face was grimy and more tired and old-looking than he had ever seen it, and he realized that his birthday had passed while the world crumbled. "I'm 32," he spoke, making almost no sound.

Resigning himself to the fact that he wasn't going to get much cleaner or more well rested in the near future, he toed off his damp shoes and shucked himself out of his filthy ash-encrusted jeans and shirts. He pulled the new clothes on put his weapon back on before grabbing his discarded pants to go through the pockets. He rescued the picture from Jim's wallet and then regarded his own wallet and keys. The keys to a crumbled building, a useless car. Money, credit cards, identification issued by a government utterly gone.

He pulled out a picture of Naomi, staring at it, wishing there were any way to know what had happened to her. Most likely, of course, she was dead. Had been for days. He could only hope that she had passed peacefully in a beautiful place, the same way she chose to live. He breathed deeply to hold back the pain and slipped both pictures into his back pocket for safe keeping before standing and exiting the changing room.

"Hey, kid?" Blair called out, but the young man was talking to himself, rocking slightly. Blair listened closely for a moment and caught his whispered mantra, "...here until they get back, until they get back, until..." Shaking his head at the hopelessness of the situation, Blair turned and left, positioning his pack on his back, his helmet in the crook of one arm. On his way out the door into the late afternoon, he grabbed one more item. A map.

Not taking time to rest, Blair hopped on his motorcycle and took off out of town, as Incacha had specified, well before sundown. He rode hard, ten or twelve hours a day, replenishing gas and food at deserted stores he passed along the way. He took the highway down into Oregon, then over into Idaho and across Wyoming.

The second night, which he passed sleeping in a barn deep inside Idaho, his dreams were interrupted by a blinding flash from the south west. The white-hot light illuminated the horizon like a false sun, showing the ominous mushroom-shaped cloud that hung over whichever distant city had just been destroyed. LA? Las Vegas. Blair closed his eyes against the terrible light and felt for the direction of the wind. East to west, blowing more briskly than it had been earlier in the day. He could only hope that he would be safe, that the people in Boulder would be safe.

And all the time he trusted that there were indeed people waiting in Boulder, that it wasn't another empty shell of a city, like Cascade. His dreams had shown him what he would find--people, an attempt at order, maybe even electricity? And each day, as he rode on, the urgent need to reach that city grew.

Sitting, greasy and road-sore, in front of the gas station outside Cheyenne, he felt like he had left Cascade weeks ago, months, but it had been less than three days. In another day he would reach Boulder. However, considering the pounding in his head and the shakiness in his hands, and the fact that the water and food had not helped at all, he knew that it was time to stop for the day. Boulder lay only a few hours away, according to his map, and tomorrow morning was soon enough. It wouldn't do for him to arrive in Boulder only to fall on his face as soon as he got off his bike.

He had remembered seeing a truck in the garage where he found his gasoline. A big old Ford. He moved his bike and his pack inside the garage and then climbed up into the truck and stretched out on the seat. He yawned and closed his eyes, trying desperately not to think of Jim as he slipped off to sleep.

That night Incacha visited him again, as he had not since the night of Jim's death. Blair found himself sitting in the grass at the side of a highway, Incacha crouched across from him. The dead man smiled at Blair. "You've done well, Shaman. Your journey is almost done, and your new tribe is near. Now is the time for your true task to begin."

"What is that? What am I supposed to do?"

"The people need a guide. Capable political leadership they have, and much has been accomplished. However, they have lost the woman who brought them here, their tie to the old times. They need someone strong to guide them into these new days. They have fought a great evil and won, but their losses have been heavy."

A challenge. Blair warmed to the idea, identifying with the fight the people in Boulder had waged. "So, I have my work cut out for me?"

"You have the strength within you to sustain them until they are strong themselves. A new protector will arise, and then the need for your help will be even more great."

A new protector. A Sentinel? Blair didn't know if he had the heart for another Sentinel, but he looked hopefully at Incacha. "Will you be there? To show me the way?"

"No, we will not speak again, Shaman. My people have crossed over and I must follow them."

"The Chopec? All of them?" Blair whispered, aghast.

"This was a great and terrible plague. But my people are as one now, and I must guide them to their true home."

"Safe journey, then, Incacha. Thank you, for all that you have shown me. And if you see Enqueri on your way..."

"I will give him your love, though he surely has it already."

Blair closed his eyes and nodded. When he opened his eyes, Incacha was gone. The grass surrounding him dissolved away into darkness, and he slept soundly, for the first time in weeks.

At dawn, he woke and made use of the gas station's men's room to wash and shave and wrestle his hair back into a passable ponytail. He looked at himself in the mirror and smiled. "This is the beginning."

Then he put on his helmet and mounted his bike and rode on south to Boulder.

(Will not be continued, sorry.)


End file.
